We naturally don’t get too many laughs in the War on Terror, but yesterday’s hoax – in which an Islamist website’s claim that it held an American GI hostage, only to have it quickly discovered that the photo of the soldier clearly showed that he was a toy action figure – was frankly hilarious. If this was actually perpetrated by some Islamists hoping to scare us, it’s just the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. The Command Post had the timeline.
Category: War 2005
Go, Go Genocide!
The Minute Man notices that John Kerry now says of his legendary trip to Cambodia, “We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia.” Which would be interesting, given that the Khmer Rouge were on the other side. I’ll credit a slip of the tongue here, but isn’t it interesting that Kerry can’t even remember whose side he was on in Vietnam anymore? I mean, hey, what’s a little mixup when you’re talking about the Khmer Rouge, who went on to perpetrate perhaps the worst (per capita) genocide of the 20th century (which is saying quite a lot)?
Speaking of Vietnam, Hitchens has an amusing column explaining why Iraq is no Vietnam from the perspective of someone who (like Hitchens) was an opponent of the Vietnam War. Interesting reading, although of course Hitchens leaves off many other reasons why the parallel doesn’t withstand even momentary scrutiny, the most obvious of which is that there is no North Vietnam in this one, no half of the country controlled by the enemy.
One of the parallels that people forget, of course, is that U.S. participation in Vietnam ended with a peace treaty that settled the war on terms we could live with. The North Vietnamese then violated the treaty by re-invading the South in 1975, and the U.S. turned its back on its ally, sending the unequivocal message that treaties with the United States need not be respected – a message that pretty much destroys the case for negotiating with anyone, since without the will to enforce treaties, they aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. Fast forward to the 1990s, and we had a replay of that, as Saddam Hussein repeatedly violated the terms of the 1991 cease-fire. We could enforce those terms, or we could yet again tell the world that we don’t care who lives up to agreements with us. (I have yet to hear anyone who calls the current war “illegal” attempt to grapple honestly with the question of whether international law, or whatever other source of law you care to think on, requires nations to take violations of terms of a cease-fire lying down).
Tired, Tired Tropes
Another Milestone
Hard to find much to add to today’s events in Iraq, but to say that, judging by the goals I set out in June, we’ve taken another important step. It’s truly historic to see the determination of so many Iraqis to brave threats to vote – really the first time since Saddam’s regime fell in April 2003 that the Iraqi people have put their heads up and made such a statement on their own behalf.
Secular Media Bias=Progress
Was just watching CNN’s surprisingly upbeat coverage of the Iraqi elections, and Christian Amanpour was interviewing an Iraqi policeman who was speaking hopefully about the future . . . I noticed that the first word of his response, before the translator’s voice-over kicked in, was “insh’allah.” Now, if I know five words of Arabic it’s a lot, but even I know that that roughly translates as “God willing,” yet the translator’s rendering left out all references to God.
Still, I guess if oridnary Iraqis have to start worrying about the Western media looking down on their religion, well, that’ll be real progress from the things that have plagued them in the past.
New Instability
No, No Natan?
Chris Suellentrop pens a silly, silly article for Slate on Natan Sharansky’s book “The Case for Democracy” – much lauded by President Bush – and “where Sharanksy disagrees with the president’s policies.” The underlying silliness is that Suellentrop is trying to discredit Bush’s overall strategy here by pointing out tactical disagreements. The details are sillier.
Let’s review the charges:
1. “Sharansky directly criticizes the administration’s haste to hold elections in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Fair enough, although that’s an issue on which a lot of fair-minded people can disagree, and we won’t know the answer for many years.
2. “Sharansky also questions the legitimacy of the Palestinian elections won by Mahmoud Abbas” . . . Sharansky rips the “road map,” . . . “Sharansky says Mahmoud Abbas desires only a “temporary truce” with Israel.” Of course, Sharansky is looking at peace talks with Abbas from the Israeli perspective and asking if this will work. Bush has a broader issue to consider: will renewing talks with Abbas help alleviate anti-U.S. tensions elsewhere? Talking to Arafat truly was useless. But Abbas was elected, apparently reasonably fairly, and he has publicly called for a stop to terror. I understand well Sharansky’s point – Abbas isn’t renouncing Arafat’s overall strategy, just shifting tactics. But there’s reason enough to believe that Abbas may be a practical man we can do business with – like Gorbachev, who similarly wanted to change tactics in the face of reality – and it’s worth finding out. In any event, Suellentrop isn’t interested in these nuances, he’s just trying to drive a wedge in the traditional “even Bush’s closest advisers disagree with him” mold.
3. Check this one:
Sharansky sharply criticizes the way human rights “has come to mean sympathy for the poor, the weak, and the suffering,” because “sympathy can also be placed in the service of evil.”
Is Suellentrop really accusing Bush of being too concerned with battling international poverty? Boy, liberalism sure has changed.
4. This is a doozy:
Criticizing U.S. Policy Provides Aid and Comfort to Whom?
Page xii: Reading The Morning Star, a London Communist daily, “would prove highly subversive” for young Sharansky. Rather than absorbing the content of the paper, he was astounded by “the very fact that people outside the Soviet Union were free to criticize their own government without going to prison.
C’mon, it has never been the Bush Administration’s policy that all criticism is aid and comfort to the enemy, and I doubt you could ever find a quote where Bush says anything like that. That’s an absurd canard. Yes, Republicans have argued that the tone and volume of some criticism, particularly the media drumbeat of negativity, has been a boon to our enemies. But how this shows Sharansky disagreeing with Bush’s policy of promoting democracy is beyond me.
5. And this:
Let a Thousand Frances Bloom!
Page 95: “The democracy that hates you is less dangerous than the dictator that loves you.”
That’s different from our policy of promoting democracy how? It’s not like we’re trying to replace Chirac with a Musharraf type.
6. Suellentrop also goes after a quote in Sharansky’s book:
Sharansky says Arthur Schlesinger Jr. opined in the 1980s that “those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse, ready with one small push to go over the brink are wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves.” But Sharansky’s footnote for this remark declares vaguely, “Schlesinger is reported to have made this statement after his return from a trip to the Soviet Union in 1982.”
Well, I don’t have an original source for that quote either, but a simple Google search shows it coming from a 1999 book and subsequent articles by Dinesh D’Souza; it’s not like Sharansky made this up.
The Future of War
Check out Tom Barnett’s op-ed on The Command Post. He’s not overly kind to Rumsfeld, but gives him his due; at a minimum, Barnett aptly cuts to the core of the debate between air and ground power and the need to maintain both for differing purposes. This part resonated:
The trajectory of combat across the 1990s hadn’t served the Army and Marines well in Pentagon debates. While the Air Force was winning wars “all by itself” in Iraq, the Balkans, and later-Afghanistan, the Army and Marines were left holding the bag in such crappy situations as Somalia and Haiti. Within the Pentagon, Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW) was strongly perceived-and is still perceived in many quarters today-as a form of war that the American public can’t stomach in terms of losses incurred (“body-bag syndrome”), longevity (America’s SADD: strategic attention deficit disorder), immoral acts (e.g., atrocities like Abu Ghraib and beheadings of hostages), and demand for resources (Senator So-and-So: “We spend more money in Iraq by breakfast than we’ve spent all year on [name his or her favorite cause]”).
Who’s Winning The Iraqi Elections?
Patrick Ruffini looks at an overlooked question. Of course, Sadr isn’t Dennis Kucinich, he’s Al Sharpton.
Looking Ahead
This has to reflect well on Rudy Giuliani:
Three decades before Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center with planes, a secret presidential panel warned that Islamic terrorists might blow up U.S. jetliners or contaminate cities with radioactive “dirty bombs.”
The Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism, formed by President Richard Nixon, even asked the advice of a young prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani testified in 1976 that the Justice Department, where he was a top official, “must take a more active position in combating terrorism,” according to once-classified documents unearthed by The Associated Press and released yesterday.
Giuliani urged easing legal restrictions on domestic intelligence – an action not taken until the Patriot Act was signed into law weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks.
“Mr. Giuliani noted that … there was difficulty in collecting domestic intelligence unless there was some indication that there had been a violation of law,” the file states.
The panel found that another major problem involved a lack of communication between key agencies, said one ex-official.
“The FBI and CIA were not talking enough,” Lewis Hoffacker, a committee chairman, told the Daily News. He invoked a complaint made decades later by the 9/11 commission.
The special panel was formed by Nixon after the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, where 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists. Members met for five years and developed scenarios involving attacks on Americans, but ultimately their influence waned and the panel dissolved.
Bully Pulpit
One of the core convictions that separates conservatives from liberals – and, to some extent, libertarians as well – is the importance conservatives place on strong law enforcement, a strong military and a tough foreign policy. In his Second Inaugural Address yesterday, President Bush said something that really cut to the core of that conviction:
We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.
Now, I got pushed around a lot when I was younger, and probably the main reason I became a conservative, even before I started thinking through the other aspects of conservatism, was the realization that conservatives know how to deal with bullies, which is to say not through negotiation or paying them off, but by confronting them with superior force.
On the other hand, this struck me as going too far, and something Bush will live to regret:
Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world:
All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
There is, it is true, no question that the Bush Administration’s sympathies will lie with everyone who fights for liberty and democracy, and that the White House and the State Department will issue nice little press releases on their behalf, which is better than nothing. And it’s also true that our end objective is to promote liberty and democracy everywhere.
But we shouldn’t pretend that we will stand up equally for dissidents against every regime, because we won’t. Winning a long-term global war means picking our battles and, among other things, deciding where we can live with unsavory allies for a time. That means, in practical reality, that we’re not going to do very much to support pro-democracy forces in, say, Turkmenistan, because we have bigger fish to fry at the moment.
This fact is why I give no credence to complaints that the U.S. is somehow hypocritical in promoting democracy in some places while making alliances of convenience with nasty dictators in others. Our long-term goal of promoting democracy and liberty is unchanged, but we have to get there by starting somewhere. Complaints about hypocrisy are like the case of a man who decides to repaint his house from blue to green, and his neighbor comes by a few weeks later and says, “You hypocrite! You said you wanted a green house, but here we stand weeks later and the whole back of the house is still blue, while you lavish green paint on the front; why can’t you put green paint on all sides of the house equally?” Naturally, the man will reply, “you idiot! I’m trying to finish painting the front of the house, and get that job done right, before I start the back.”
Bush, unfortunately, made it sound yesterday like we intend to paint all sides of the house equally, which we can’t, shouldn’t and won’t.
On the other hand, I did like Jonah Goldberg’s line about the speech: “I wish someone would wrap a dead fish with it and drop it off at the Saudi embassy.”
Watch Your Back, Jack
Jack Kemp needs to choose his foreign friends and clients more wisely (Jay Nordlinger’s recent NR piece on Hugo Chavez had an embarrassing episode involving Kemp as well, flacking for Chavez). This is how Kemp’s buddy Jude Wanniski wound up marginalized in conservative circles.
Fear Comes To Boston
Jeff Quinton has a roundup of the latest news on the terror alert in the Boston area focusing on four named Chinese nationals.
Could the current scare be linked to this story, especially given that law enforcement apparently has a tip that the suspects crossed the border from Mexico?
Boston Street Gang Linked to Al Qaeda
An ominous development: the Boston Herald reported yesterday that federal law enforcement agencies have warned the Boston police that an East Boston street gang with roots in El Salvador is cooperating with Al Qaeda:
A burgeoning East Boston-based street gang made up of alleged rapists and machete-wielding robbers has been linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, prompting Boston police to “turn up the heat” on its members, the Herald has learned.
MS-13, which stands for La Mara Salvatrucha, is an extremely violent organization with roots in El Salvador, and boasts more than 100 “hardcore members” in East Boston who are suspected of brutal machete attacks, rapes and home invasions. There are hundreds more MS-13 gangsters in towns along the North Shore, said Boston police Sgt. Detective Joseph Fiandaca, who has investigated the gang since it began tagging buildings in Maverick Square in 1995.
In recent months, intelligence officials in Washington have warned national law enforcement agencies that al-Qaeda terrorists have been spotted with members of MS-13 in El Salvador, prompting concerns the gang may be smuggling Islamic fundamentalist terrorists into the country. Law enforcement officials have long believed that MS-13 controls alien smuggling routes along Mexico.
The warning is being taken seriously in East Boston, where Raed Hijazi, an al-Qaeda operative charged with training the suicide bombers in the attack on the USS Cole, lived and worked, prosecutors have charged.
[snip]
The theory that Salvadoran criminals manage to smuggle people over the border was bolstered this month when two Boston men described as MS-13 leaders were spotted on the North Shore days before Christmas – a year after they were deported by Boston Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators for gang-related crimes.
Read the whole thing. Of course, while I’m generally pro-immigration, the connection between control of smuggling of illegal immigrants from Mexico and smuggling of Al Qaeda terrorists across the border is enough to give even the most ardent open-borders types pause.
Claiming Credit
[W]hen disaster strikes, what matters is not whether your cheque is “prompt”, but whether you are. For all the money lavished on them, the UN is hard to rouse to action. Egeland’s full-time round-the-clock 24/7 Big Humanitarians are conspicuous by their all but total absence on the ground. In fact, they’re doing exactly what our reader accused Washington of doing – Colin Powell, wrote Mr Eddison, “is like a surgeon saying he must do a bandage count before he will be in a position to staunch the blood flow of a haemorrhaging patient”. That’s the sclerotic UN bureaucracy. They’ve flown in (or nearby, or overhead) a couple of experts to assess the situation and they’ve issued press releases boasting about the assessments. In Sri Lanka, Egeland’s staff informs us, “UNFPA is carrying out reproductive health assessments”.
Which, translated out of UN-speak, means the Sri Lankans can go screw themselves.
As always, read the whole thing.
Turning Over A New Leaf
As I’ve done in the past, I’m creating brand-new categories for the new year. You’ll now go to Baseball 2005 for new baseball entries, Politics 2005 for new politics entries, War 2005 for new war entries, and Law 2005 for new law entries (the Law category hadn’t needed an overhaul last year). I’ll shortly be updating the link to baseball-only posts at the top of the page as well to send you to Baseball 2005.
Happy New Year!